2nd INTERNATIONALCONFERENCE ON

SUSTAINABLE BUILTENVIRONMENT

Yogyakarta, 23-25 May 2012Faculty of Civil Engineering and Planning,

Universitas Islam Indonesia

Call for PapersLivable cities in the

fast-growingcountries

In recent years, livability is seen as one of theindicators for assessing quality of living incities around the world. Melbourne wasrecently selected as the most livable city inthe world. The selection was conducted bythe Economist Intelligence Unit, who basedtheir selection on a combination of factorsrelated to the environment, health care,culture and infrastructure systems. However,the results of such a survey suggest thatnone of the top ten most livable cities in theworld are the cities of the fast-growingcountries in the global south. This leads tothe perception that, using the sameindicators, cities like Jakarta, Mumbai, andRio de Janeiro, will never be seen as ‘livable’cities – a paradox to the facts that thesecities own a much higher population thancities in the north, yet significantly contributeto the stability of the global economy,regardless of the fact that a significantnumber of residents of these cities inhabitinformal and squatters’ settlements.

With over one billion people in the worldliving in slums today1, urban informalitybecomes part of everyday life in the urbanglobal south. Therefore, the challenge ofmaking a city livable in such a region is tobridge the gap between formal/informalsystems, rich/poor citizens, healthy/unhealthyenvironment, etc. In the light of AmartyaSen’s notion of development, bridging theabove gaps means to minimize or eradicatefactors that hinder such development, whichSen calls ‘unfreedom’. For Amartya Sen,development is seen as a way to achievefreedom by ‘removing unfreedom’.

Inspired by the above notion, theconference aims to better understand howlivability is perceived in the fast-growing citiesof the south. What kinds of ‘unfreedom’ needto be tackled in the planning and design ofthe built environment in order to achieve suchlivability? This conference is intended toprovide a venue for sharing the knowledgeand experiences among actors ofdevelopment in coping with the issues relatedto livability in the urban built environment,which include issues such as wastemanagement, transportation, disastermitigation, informal settlement, food security,and accessibility; and to develop instrumentsfor assessing such livability in the urbanglobal south.

Tentative scheduleThursday – Saturday, 24 – 26 May 2012

VenueConference room, Central Library Building,Universitas Islam Indonesia, Yogyakarta,Indonesia

Main subthemesUrban disaster mitigation and conflictmanagementNatural hazards (i.e. earthquake, floods)pose a threat to people, their cities’infrastructure and the environment. Urbanareas are particularly vulnerable not onlybecause of the concentration of populationbut also due to the interplay between people,

1 Based on the UN estimation in 2007.